validation
by jane hidell
Summary: John Connor comes to terms with the validation of his existence, with the help of some loved ones old and new.
1. against all evidence

disclaimer...obviously, the characters are not my own; just their thoughts and actions in this particular story. :)  
  
i. against all evidence  
  
The noise was unbearable.voices and explosions and screams melded into one cacophonous hell. Other stations in the control center had switched on to receive the volume of desperate calls, and the din surrounded them as they huddled against one of the terminals.  
Kate's eyes were squeezed shut, her face pressed against Connor's chest in a futile attempt to drown out the sound. Her mouth was open in a silent scream as she clung to him, almost wishing the shelter walls would just fall in on them.  
Connor's eyes were open but unfocused as he listened to the war begin, listened to his existence being validated.... It was all coming true, and billions were dying, and he was going to save the human race.  
At the moment, though, all he wanted to do was curl up in a ball and die. He wanted his mother, he wanted Terminator, he wanted someone to tell him what to do.but they were gone. He would have to figure the rest out on his own.  
But not entirely on his own, he realized, his arms wrapped around the shuddering Kate. She was a part of the future that they had never known about, but right now he couldn't imagine the future without her. He buried his face in her hair and began to cry.  
Though it seemed like an eternity, within a few minutes all open channels produced nothing but static. Kate slowly opened her eyes but was loath to release her grip on Connor. Then she noticed that he was mumbling something into her hair, and she reluctantly moved a bit to hear what he was saying.  
"I'm so sorry, Kate," he cried, his eyes squeezed shut now. "I couldn't stop it."  
"No, John," she said quietly but firmly. "You weren't meant to stop it. Nothing you could have done would have stopped it." She couldn't keep the fatalistic tone from her voice, but she had been forced to alter her worldview quite drastically that day, and parts of her were still adapting. She sat back, thinking. -Some things were meant to happen.- "We were meant to go into this together," she added quietly.  
They looked into each other's tired eyes. He, whose entire life had been leading up to this moment. She, whose entire world had been reduced to this place, this man, in barely twelve hours.  
Kate no longer saw a mess when she looked at Connor. She saw a man who had lived his whole life with the knowledge that he would see the world end. How many people would have pulled the trigger long ago?  
And though his eyes were haunted by this knowledge and dulled by recent events, she could see in them what she saw all those years ago...strength, a fighting spirit that they would need when things seemed hopeless.  
And didn't things seem awfully hopeless now? She put her arms around Connor's neck and rested her head against his. "We'll be okay," she said softly, and against all evidence she meant it.  
  
------  
  
They stayed on the floor for a while, leaning against each other, dulled by their own thoughts. They both knew they should get up and do something, and it wasn't like huddling on the floor was comfortable, but...moving, doing something, would somehow make it all real.  
At one point Kate's leg bumped against the ankle the T-X had grabbed, making Connor jump. Looking at his leg, she decided it was time to take the initiative.  
The first thing she did was switch off all the speakers. She doubted anyone would be trying to call now.  
"We need to get your leg cleaned up," she said, helping him to his feet. "Not to mention any other damage you've sustained," she added, suddenly noticing blood all over him.  
"You've taken some damage yourself," he replied, gently touching her face. She winced, not even knowing her cheek had been cut. A mirror hung on a nearby wall, and they staggered over to it. Looking at themselves, battered and cut but alive, they couldn't help but smile at each other.  
They managed to find the infirmary, and Kate helped Connor onto an examination table. He lay down while she investigated the supplies; having opened just one cabinet, she turned to him and whistled. "There's enough here to medicate an army."  
Connor lay still while she tended his wounds, the sensation of being treated by a person other than himself something of a luxury in his life. And the care and concern with which she fixed him up were downright extravagant.  
Once his wounds were clean and his bandages were secure, Kate dug around in a cabinet for some medication. She found some antibiotics and inspected the label, expecting to find an expiration date somewhere in the 1970s. To her surprise, the medicine didn't expire for another year. At any other time in her life she would have made a crack about 'your tax dollars at work'; now she just thanked God that some government lackey had been responsible for keeping the shelters supplied.  
Feeling Connor's forehead, she thought he felt a little too warm. (Feeling Kate's hand on his forehead, Connor could have died happy right there and then.) After Kate had stuffed him with antibiotics, a fever reducer, and something to help him sleep, he closed his eyes as if to fall asleep right there.  
"Hey," she scolded, "this is no place for the savior of humankind to sleep." She grabbed him gently and hauled him off the table. "Saviors deserve beds."  
He smiled sleepily at her attempt at levity. Terminator was right, it almost always makes us feel better. And a bed? Would the pampering ever stop?  
There was a room off the barracks-style sleeping quarters that Kate figured must have been meant for the president or whatever VIP would be in charge of this particular shelter. Well, it's our room now, she thought. I'd say we're important enough.  
Kate got him settled on the bed, then turned to go. With lightning speed he grabbed her arm and asked where she was going. She looked down at him fighting sleep, obviously afraid of being left alone again. Where would I possibly go, John? she thought to herself, but he looked seriously worried. She wondered just how long he had been alone.  
"I'm going to do some reconnaissance, check out the supplies. See what kind of food this place has." She smiled and put a hand against his cheek. "I'll be back, don't worry."  
Satisfied, he promptly drifted to sleep. She ran her hand up through his hair, kissed him on the forehead, and left the room.  
There would be plenty of time to save the world later, but right now they needed to take care of themselves. 


	2. she must be something

ii. she must be something  
  
Connor hadn't been asleep for long when he felt someone in the room. Thinking Kate was back, he opened his mouth to ask what she had found.  
"John," a voice, not Kate's, said.  
Connor opened his eyes disbelievingly. His mother was standing in the doorway, alive and strong, smiling at him. Overjoyed would be an understatement as he leapt off the bed and ran to her, almost knocking her over with his hug.  
"Oof, careful, honey," she laughed, hugging him back. "You're injured. Now get back into bed." He obeyed, pulling her along with him. She sat on the edge of the bed, looking at him tenderly. "Look how you've grown."  
"Oh, Mom," he said, tears welling in his eyes, "we didn't stop it. It happened anyway. He said it was inevitable..."  
"I know, John," Sarah said soothingly. "But you'll do all right. I raised you well, if I do say so myself. And Kate..."  
"Did you know about her?"  
Sarah smiled. "I'm as surprised as you were. But it's quite a wonderful surprise. You'll be good for each other."  
"Isn't she something, Mom?" he said excitedly, almost like he was thirteen again. "You should have seen her. Without her we couldn't have made it out of there. She...she reminded me of...you."  
"Well then she -must- be something," Sarah said teasingly. Then she was serious. "You'll be all right, John. I always knew you would be."  
Connor was trying very hard not to cry. "I've been so lonely, Mom."  
"I know honey, but.that was the smart thing to do," she replied. "I know your life has been so much harder than anyone could know....But you're not alone anymore. And you'll be able to do what you need to do."  
Connor wished he had as much faith in himself, but he nodded. He wasn't feeling too good; he was sweating, and his vision was starting to blur. "Mom, I feel sick."  
Any other time she would have panicked, but now she just smiled warmly. "You need to rest, John," she said. "Just rest and you'll be okay." She lightly touched his face. "I'm proud of you," she said softly.  
Connor lay back down and closed his eyes. "Just don't leave, Mom, okay...? ...Mom?"  
When he looked up she was gone. He rolled onto his side and tried not to throw up with grief.  
  
------  
  
Once Kate had finished dealing with her own injuries, she was ready to explore. She hit the kitchen first, quickly deciding that they would not be eating in the large dining room. The whole thing was feeling a just a little too Overlook Hotel for her, and she was pleased to find a smaller eating area behind the kitchen, near the pantry. The pantry was well- stocked, and while the variety and canned and dried foods may have been lacking, they would not starve.  
Next she began to look for clothing; they couldn't wear what they had on for however long they would be here. She located the laundry and found a dusty but acceptable assortment of linens and clothing. After loading up a washing machine, she headed for the bathrooms.  
Her shoes echoed on the tile floor, making her shiver. She wondered how many other shelters like this were destined for an eternity of emptiness, with rooms that would never hear such an echo, lonely as it was. She thought that perhaps some had made it to safety like they did, though the realistic part of her doubted it. No one else had had a cyborg from the future looking out for them.  
She felt a pang of gratitude to the machine John seemed so attached to; if not for him....Well, best not to think about it.  
The plumbing seemed to work fine; the water was fresh. Kate stared at herself in the mirror, reflecting on the day's events. -I am going to be a leader...a leader of men and women fighting machines...fighting a war against machines...alongside John...who will lead us all.-  
Had she really been shopping with Scott this time yesterday? Had the world really been okay yesterday? It seemed like this coming war was all she'd ever known, even though just twelve hours ago it had sounded like a load of bull. She held her hand up in front of her; the engagement ring on her finger seemed like an artifact from some previous life.  
...Poor Scott. She had cared for him, but ever since she said yes to his proposal she had felt trapped. Life with him would have been comfortable, predictable...most likely boring. She had thought her father would approve of him, but thinking about it now she realized her father would have thought Scott was a wimp. He had known John for mere minutes before his death but had liked him, had thought she had 'done the right thing...'  
But still, poor Scott. Wimp or not, he didn't deserve to die. None of those people up there had deserved to die, not like that.  
She tried to picture herself as a resistance fighter...leading people, distributing weapons, facing an onslaught of HKs. She thought back to what it had felt like to shoot that AK-47, and truth be told, it had felt a lot more natural than she would have thought twenty-four hours before. Her father had shaped her into a better fighter than he could have imagined.  
So much had changed that day, the human mind really couldn't process it. Thinking about it all had made her very tired, and she decided it was time to take a nap with John.  
On the way back to the bedroom she noticed John's knapsack where he had dropped it in frustration. She picked it up and really, really, meant to just take it with her...but she couldn't help herself.  
Inside she found the red folder her father had given them, and she made a choking sound. There was also a handgun, some ammunition for the magnetized AK-47, a notebook (which she didn't open), and a photograph.  
She took the photograph out and stared at it; it was old and had been laminated several times, and Kate's breath caught as she realized who it must be. The pregnant woman in the photograph shared many of John's features, not least that odd combination of determination and fatigue.  
There was so much she wanted to know. While she had been living a standard army brat existence - - reading Nancy Drew, going to prom, taking the ACT - - this woman and her son were preparing for nuclear war, living in the shadow of the world's destruction. How did they deal with it? What all does John know how to do? What happened that caused him to be a foster child, and what has he been doing since they kissed all those years ago?  
She carefully put the photograph back in the knapsack and closed it. The first thing they were going to do when John had recovered was have a long, long talk.  
When she entered the bedroom and saw John on his side clutching his stomach, she panicked and ran over to him. But his breathing was steady, his fever seemed to be breaking, and none of his wounds appeared to have reopened. She breathed easier and set the bag on the floor next to him.  
Kate lay down on the bed and stretched out, then watched John sleeping. She thought she could relate to how his mother must have felt all those years....Here's this person that you love more than anything, but not only do you need to protect him because you love him, you need to protect him because he's going to be the salvation of humankind. Every scratch, every sneeze, takes on a new world of worry.  
She wished she could meet his mother, just to ask her how she did it. How do you raise salvation?  
Kate scooted as close as she could without waking him and closed her eyes. Whatever would happen in the future, for the moment she felt safe. 


	3. frame of reference

iii. frame of reference  
  
"John."  
Connor's eyelids fluttered.  
"John."  
He shook his head, trying to clear it. Where he had felt hot before he now felt cold, and everything felt fuzzy.  
Again, "John."  
His mind finally focusing, Connor looked up and saw Terminator standing inside the doorway. This time he knew he was just a fever dream like his mother had been, but nonetheless Connor was happy to see him.  
Terminator didn't smile, but once Connor noticed him he put his arms out in a fair approximation of the desire for a hug. Connor got out of bed more slowly this time - - the fever was getting worse before it got better - - but still ran with enthusiasm to Terminator, throwing his arms around him and almost knocking himself unconscious in the process.  
Terminator, unmoved physically by Connor's running hug, put his arms carefully around him. "You are sick," he stated, having instantly run a scan of Connor's body.  
"Yeah but I'm...I'm getting better. Kate...she gave me medicine..." The mix of fever and emotions were overwhelming him, and he began to crumple to the floor. Terminator caught him, however, and moved him over to the bed.  
"She is already serving you well," Terminator said.  
Connor stared up at him, his head swimming. "She's...she's great. I think I'm in love."  
"That will make your marriage to her easier."  
Connor laughed out loud. "Man, haven't you learned anything?"  
Terminator was quiet for a moment, as if trying to formulate the right way to say something. "Whether you live...makes a difference to me."  
Connor now had to fight tears again. "I wish you were here."  
"You will be fine on your own."  
He looked down. "I guess we'll have to be, but still."  
"It is early. You will find your strength." He added, "You have to. Everyone is counting on you."  
-Another- person with faith in him. He looked up, but Terminator's face remained impassive. Whatever he may have learned to "feel," he hadn't learned to manifest it visually. "Right now -no one- is counting on me. I'm not the world hero yet."  
"Katherine Brewster is counting on you."  
"Call her 'Kate,' okay? No one refers to people by their full names like that."  
Noting this, Terminator said, "Kate is counting on you."  
Connor inhaled slowly. "I heard you the first time." He buried his face in his hands. "You really think I can do it, huh?"  
"There is no question that you will do it. You are John Connor."  
"I know my own name," Connor replied a little testily, tired of his name, his mere existence, simply -who he was- being enough to prove that he would become this great leader. -Of course I'll do it. You've seen me do it. It's happened, it's going to happen, it's happening right now.-  
Connor closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Dream or not, he didn't want to spend it being angry at one of the (literally) few people he'd ever felt close to.  
"Tell me again...that we'll be okay," he said quietly, staring at the floor. When no answer came, he glanced up, certain Terminator was gone.  
But he wasn't. He had tried (largely unsuccessfully) to smile, and he gave Connor a thumbs-up.  
  
--------  
  
Connor woke and was startled to see Kate's face so close to his. She was sleeping with her head resting on one hand; the other was so close to Connor's face he was probably breathing on it.  
He stared at the engagement ring on her finger, feeling a vague and absurd pang of jealousy towards this man he had never seen. How much had he loved her? How much had she loved him? ...How much did she love him still? He could hack into computer systems and use just about any small arm known to man, but in affairs of the heart he had no frame of reference.  
Kate twitched in her sleep and made a low mumbling sound. He wondered what she was dreaming about. ...Was she dreaming about Scott? Would she awake expecting him to be next to her, and would she be inconsolable when she saw Connor instead? He was very much used to waking up without the ones he loved, but she was not.  
Her sleep became increasingly agitated, and he thought maybe he should wake her up. He moved to shake her, but as soon as his hand touched her arm she jerked awake. "Ohmigod," she gasped, putting a hand to her head.  
"Are you okay?" Connor asked. "Did you...have a bad dream?"  
Covering her eyes, she said, "It's-it's a dream I've had before. But now it makes sense." Her eyes were filling with tears. He didn't know if he should move to comfort her or just let her be, but before he could make a decision she reached out to him, clutching him and resting her head on his chest. He put an arm around her and waited for her to speak.  
"In the dream I'm-I'm running through the streets...no particular streets, just streets that begin to fill with people. And I'm screaming at them, telling them to run, except I can't scream, I'm voiceless. And then there's fire, fire everywhere, and people are bursting into flames and...and even though I'm running right through the fire I'm okay. I'm not even hot. And still I can't say anything, I can't do anything but run and try to scream." She was shaking. "And it wasn't 'just a dream.' All of those people were killed...but I'm okay."  
Connor held her as she tried to calm down. He was so used to the idea of so many people dying, had never known any different, that he was relatively unaffected by survivor guilt. Billions of lives would end, but his would continue; that had simply been a given in his world. But Kate had been plucked from those billions, had meant to be saved; and she was still having to grasp why.  
Kate took several deep breaths, willing herself to get a grip. Her cheek was resting right over Connor's heart, and she let its beating steady her and keep her grounded to this new reality. Yes, what had happened in her dream had essentially come true; but she had been chosen to survive for a reason, and she owed it to those who had died to live up to her survival. She allowed her breathing to sync up with John's; this was her whole world now.  
Understandably, it would take a little bit of time to adjust.  
Eventually Kate sat up; sniffling and red-eyed, she absentmindedly looked around the room. The decor was no longer what one would call "modern," but at the time of installation must have seemed the height of post-apocalyptic comfort.  
The silence was making Connor nervous. "I dreamed about them," he said quietly. "I dream about them a lot but...this time was different. I mean, -they were here-."  
Knowing who 'they' had to be, Kate nodded.  
Connor stared at the ceiling. "As much as I miss her, as much as I think about her all the time...I'm glad my mother didn't live to see this."  
"She would have been proud of you," Kate said softly. She put her hand in his.  
"They said we'd be okay."  
She smiled sadly. "Did you believe them?"  
He squeezed her hand and smiled back. "Against my better judgment...yeah." 


	4. something funny

iv. something funny  
  
As tired as they were, neither one of them felt like going back to sleep just then. Kate thought John should get some more rest, but he wanted to explore. She went to put the clothes she was washing in a dryer while he poked around the main room.  
It felt not unlike the set of a post-apocalyptic 1950s sitcom. Or a post-apocalyptic 1950s hotel lobby. At any rate, it was kinda creepy and the couches probably weren't comfortable even in 1958. Several shelves of books held classic works of American literature.oddly enough there was no Tolstoy.  
Connor noticed a stack of boxes against one wall, and when Kate reentered the room she found him rummaging through them. It looked as though he was preparing for a retro garage sale, as each box proved to be full of odds and ends from the various decades that the shelter was better maintained.  
Kate looked through the stuff he had pulled out; mostly it was office supplies, things like notebooks and ballpoint pens, as if someone decided that documentation would be important in the event of nuclear war. Which, she had to admit, would not be a bad idea. She picked out some supplies for herself, thinking maybe writing a journal could help her deal with things.  
"Awesome!" Connor yelled, pulling out a Polaroid camera from the late 1970s. "I wonder if it still works," he said, excitedly tearing open a packet of film.  
Kate watched him, bemused. When he had loaded the camera, he stood up and said, "Okay, Kate, smile."  
"What?" she sputtered. "But I-"  
"Come on, we should take pictures before we clean up, you know, record the first day. We can show them to--" He was going to say 'our children,' but stopped himself. "-to, you know, other people," he finished lamely.  
Kate, feeling uncomfortable posing for a "before" picture in the wake of nuclear holocaust, was about the protest again when she remembered the photo in his knapsack.... She realized that he had a point; photographs were important, for history and for sanity.  
"What do you want me to do?" she asked, standing with her arms at her sides.  
"Just think of something funny."  
Something funny? Now? She laughed bitterly at the stupidity of his request, but before she could comment he snapped the picture. -Smart man,- she thought.  
"Sorry," he said, holding up the developing picture. "I didn't know how else to make you smile."  
She walked over to him and they watched the picture develop together. He had managed to catch her at the perfect moment of bitter laughter, and her smile was very incongruous with her stained clothing and bandaged face. But somehow the disorderliness made her smile all the more beautiful, and Connor stared at it a little too long before saying, "Okay, my turn."  
He stood right where she had and folded his arms, trying his best to look like a leader. At the moment he looked more like a tired hobo, but the potential was there. Kate looked him over through the viewfinder-the pant leg cut to the knee, his ankle bandaged, the rest of him bloody and torn, but still strong despite it all.and, she had to admit to herself, more than a little handsome. -This man is going to save the world,- she thought as she took his picture, and she shivered.  
As they watched his picture develop, Connor couldn't remember the last time his picture had been taken. Obviously he had avoided such things for the past decade, and trips to the Sears Portrait Studio had never been high on his mother's priority list. He guessed the only times his picture had been taken were during the brief time he was separated from his mother.one school picture and a few police shots.  
They put the pictures next to each other on top of her new notebook and then headed to the kitchen. Connor was curious to see what they would be eating during their "stay."  
"I think we'll be able to do more with it than you might think," she said helpfully as he stared at the cans of twenty-year-old vegetables.  
They began looking through the food, separating what they deemed edible from the rest. Connor felt quite at home in this bastardization of a domestic scene, but as the day wore on (Day? Night? Who knew?) Kate grew more distant and eventually failed to respond to him at all. Connor was concerned, but when he finally asked her what was wrong (a silly question, yes), she abruptly said she was going to bed and left.  
Connor dithered with the food on his own for a while, but without Kate he felt the isolation closing in on him. He decided he could use some sleep too.  
She had turned out the lights in the bedroom, and though there were a few emergency lights along the baseboard he couldn't really see anything. He assumed she would have laid down where she was before and subsequently almost sat on her; he stammered an apology, but she just rolled over and away from him.  
At a loss, he got under the covers and listened to her harsh breathing. He wished he knew what to say or do to help, but part of him knew there wasn't anything. Kate squirmed so much she eventually usurped all of the covers, and he let her keep them.  
  
-------  
  
The initial shock having worn off and the adrenaline of the last twenty-four hours out of her system, Kate became a ghost, albeit an incredibly weepy one. As the reality of what had happened became clearer, as she thought not just of her father and Scott but of friends and co- workers and her job and the animals at her clinic, she began to cry continuously. She cried when she thought about the past, she cried when she thought about the future. Even the thought of something once as mundane as rainbow sherbet or a station wagon would send her to the depths of despair.  
Connor was powerless to do anything. He kept an eye on her as she spent most of her time curled up on a couch in the main room, but any time he approached her she would take one look at him and begin sobbing anew. He sensed that it had nothing directly to do with him-sensed, hoped, they're pretty much the same-but if he couldn't even get close to her there was little he could even try to do to help her. And it wasn't even as if she yelled at him or even told him to go away; she was just so lost in her own misery that he knew she was beyond his reach.  
Kate's anguish was a knife constantly turning in Connor's chest, and by the end of the week he was even more of a mess than he had been when they met in the veterinary clinic. She spent roughly a week on that couch, numbly nibbling crackers he laid next to her, and it was a week of pure torture for him. It occurred to him that whatever the future Katherine Brewster had done, the present one would maybe never recover.and whatever the future John Connor had done, would he be able to reach the same heights? .It is not healthy to be left alone with such thoughts.  
Connor tried to fill the time by doing some redecorating. He gathered everything they might use in food preparation and set up the kitchen and dining room as efficiently as he could. He cleaned some more clothes and carefully laid them out. He found an old framed portrait of JFK and tucked the snapshots of his mother and Kate inside the frame; this he put on his nightstand. He put their notebooks and some pens in the drawers.  
He slowly began to go insane.  
Connor was sitting at the dining table with his head down, having reluctantly consumed half a can of fruit cocktail, when Kate walked in and sat down. Startled, he sat up and looked at her warily. They both looked destroyed, and he opened his mouth to say something when she broke the silence first.  
"Tell me about your mother," she said hoarsely. 


	5. everything makes sense

v. everything makes sense  
  
Kate began eating what was left of the fruit cocktail as Connor gathered his thoughts. How could he properly describe all that his mother had done, all that she had been through?  
"For the first years of my life, Mom and I lived down in Mexico..All of the stuff she taught me she first had to learn herself, while I was still too young to comprehend. She took it all very seriously, this role she had been given, and the role her son had been given. And I believed it all, and was dead serious right along with her. I mean, what was I supposed to think? I had never known any different."  
Kate had been chewing the fruit cocktail very pensively as she listened to John speak, trying to picture him as a five-year-old boy learning to handle an automatic weapon.  
"How did your mother know all this? Who told her what you would be?"  
Connor gnawed on his thumbnail. "Well.my father told her."  
Kate was no less confused. "How did -he- know, then? And what happened to him?"  
"Um.that's another story."  
Kate shrugged and motioned for him to continue with his tale.  
"Anyway, then she was caught breaking into this computer place, and she got put away in an institution. Suddenly I'm thrown into the 'real world,' and it seems that everything she had ever told me had been fantasies and lies. I was angry beyond reason, and confused, and more than a little scared. To go from future world leader to future junior college student? I didn't know what to think, or who to believe, or."  
Now Kate tried to picture him as a thirteen-year-old boy, the boy she had known. She vaguely remembered him being pissed off all the time.  
"Then one day -he- showed up. And he was everything Mom had described, the nightmare she had lived with for years, except this time he was here to save us. And he did, and for those few days it was like I had a father, and in its own perverted way it was comforting. We destroyed the company that had been working on the Skynet technology, and we thought we had prevented the war." He looked up at the ceiling. "Guess not. And ever since then we had lived much the way we had the first time, albeit a little more optimistically."  
Kate put the can of fruit down. "Okay, you will have to explain all of that in -much more depth- later, because I have at best a tenuous grasp on everything you said."  
"Imagine having lived it."  
"But getting back to your mother.how did she stay sane through all of that? Was your father around to help?"  
  
Connor took a deep breath. "Well, you see, I haven't met my father yet." Seeing that Kate had no response to that, he continued. "Some years from now, I will send him back to protect my mother from a Terminator.like the one you met, but bad, sent to kill my mom to keep me from being born. And well.he and my mom will hit it off.or did hit it off, whatever.and I'm the result. But he was killed that same night, and my mother managed to get away.  
"As far as I can tell she loved him a lot. I never saw her get emotionally attached to anyone, not like that at least. She never liked to talk about him; when I would ask she would just tell me that he was a great man whom I would get to meet later." He smiled sheepishly. "Like I said, who was I to disbelieve her? That was my world."  
All this talk of the past and his mother had made him kind of uncomfortable and more than a little sad. "I can tell you more later, but why don't you tell me about your parents?"  
Kate shook her head. "There's nothing to tell. My mother was a legal assistant who left my father when I was ten. I've barely seen her since then..She's certainly nothing like your mother," she added with a touch of quiet awe.  
Connor wondered why she was so interested in his mother, but didn't know how to ask. Kate must have sensed his confusion and stood up, wringing her hands.  
"These past few days I've thought a lot about.us, and this situation, and what is expected of me. And I've thought a lot about your mother, and wondered how she dealt with it all. Clearly she dealt well, because I mean, look at you. But I didn't have that, and I'm afraid that I won't be able to become what I should."  
She had her back to John, and he watched her for a moment before responding. "Originally you and I would have been together for years before Judgment Day. And in that timeline, you became what you fear living up to. Who's to say you can't become that now? It's obviously in you somewhere."  
Kate's eyes filled with tears, for that was exactly what she had been trying to convince herself. The words -fate- and -destiny- had played ad nauseam in her head this past week; it was her destiny to become the wife and second-in-command to the man who would save the world. Fate had brought them together, and when fate's timeline had been altered, it had brought them together again.  
She turned to face him. "I want you to teach me what your mother taught you. It's hard to explain, but I feel this kinship with her, and when I think about her and all she's done, I feel stronger, and everything makes sense."  
Connor smiled. "I know that feeling. And I wasn't kidding when I said you remind me of her. She would have liked you."  
She smiled. "Thank you."  
"I would like to hear more about your.family, though," he said, trying not to stare at her engagement ring. She sat down and squeezed his hand. "And I would like to tell you more. Right now, though, how about we fix some real food? I think we deserve it after the week we've had." 


	6. private thoughts

vi. private thoughts  
  
Kate was managing with mild success to fry some canned potatoes while John eyed a can of Spam warily. "Do you -really- think it's okay?"  
"Well," she replied, poking at the potatoes with a spatula, "open it and see how it smells."  
"I really don't think that'll tell me anything."  
She gave him a look, and he reluctantly opened the can, turning his face away. He peered at its contents and ever so slightly sniffed them. "I don't know."  
Kate grabbed the can from him, smelled it, and unceremoniously dumped its contents in the frying pan. "It's fine," she said with finality. John felt nauseous.  
Once the meal was as ready as it was going to be, they sat down in their makeshift breakfast nook and cautiously began to eat. It tasted decidedly less toxic than expected, and they ate with a bit more gusto.  
John eventually looked up at Kate and said, "Tell me about Scott."  
Kate paused, a forkful of food suspended in midair. She put her fork down, looking at her ring. "It's sad for so many reasons, but there isn't really much to tell," she answered quietly. "Scott was just your average nice guy with a nice job . . . . We met last year at a conference, and there was an attraction there. And don't get me wrong, I loved him, but. . . . The whole marriage thing was starting to freak me out. I didn't feel the way I felt I should be feeling, you know?"  
He really didn't, but he nodded.  
"I was feeling more and more trapped as the days passed, but I didn't know how to tell him. . . . I didn't want to break his heart." Her eyes filled with tears again. "I guess now it doesn't matter."  
John looked awkwardly down at his plate.  
"And I guess now," she continued, getting up from the table, "there's no reason for me to continue wearing this." She took off the ring and put it on a side table, next to a vase with no flowers. -Bye Scott,- she thought to herself.  
Kate returned to the table and they continued eating in silence.  
  
-----  
  
That night John found Kate writing in one of the notebooks. "If I don't start writing now, I'll never start," she said without looking up. "And I think it's important to keep some record of what's happening."  
The camera was sitting on an end table. Without a word, John picked it up and took a picture of her. She smiled but kept writing.  
He sat next to her on the couch to watch the picture develop. Kate clutched the notebook to her chest in protest. "You're going to peek!" she objected playfully.  
"No, I'm not," he replied defensively, though he would have given his left arm to see.  
She lowered the notebook hesitantly. "Well, all right. I guess we shouldn't really keep things from each other, anyway."  
"Well, there's keeping secrets and then there's having one's own private thoughts. . . .We can still have those." He caught her eye and held it a little too long. He then began to furiously shake the picture, even though it was through developing. She smiled and began writing furiously in her notebook.  
He looked down at the picture, feeling like a freaking teenager. Part of him felt guilty for even smiling, after all that had happened. But they were still human, and if they were going to save humanity they needed to hold onto their own.  
Kate paused in her writing to watch John leave the room. When he was gone she took the Polaroid of him out of the notebook and looked at it for a few moments, then put it back and tapped her pen against the paper, thinking.  
She thought it would be easier to write about everything if she was writing -to- someone, but she didn't want it to feel like a teenage girl's diary. So with a modicum of discomfort she decided to write to her children, hoping that it could explain some things she may not have the time to impart in the future.  
She had spent the afternoon writing about her life before now, and she found herself with nothing more to say. Everything she had done in the past seemed so unimportant now, except. . .  
-Your father and I first met when we were teenagers,- she wrote. -He was an ill-tempered foster kid with this weird past that, at the time, I never knew about completely. I developed a crush on him pretty quickly; girls always like the "bad boys," of course. But it was like there was a reason he was always so angry and against everybody, and it made his anger seem like inner strength instead of brattiness. I started trying to hang around him, as young girls will, and he seemed to take a liking to me, and well, one night at a friend's house we- Kate was unsure how to tell this part. -admitted we liked each other. He was the first boy I ever kissed, and I woke up pretty happy the next day. But then something happened that day and he disappeared. I really missed him and worried about him for the longest time, until I finally had to make the decision to forget about him. And ten years later, here we are. FATE is real, kids.-  
Kate put the notebook down, a bit drained. She was lost in the innocent world of eighth grade, when she was giddy from kissing a boy she liked. Her children would never know that, she realized. They would never know innocence and teenage silliness. Kate was suddenly very lonely, and she went to find John.  
She found him in the bedroom, writing in the tattered journal she had seen in his knapsack. He looked up when she entered and smiled a little. "I can write down my thoughts, too," he said in mock defense.  
"Of course you can," she replied primly, though she would have given her left arm to see.  
She climbed up onto the bed next to him and wrapped an arm in his. Resting her head on his shoulder, she said, "Did you ever get really depressed thinking about the future? How everything would die, or change?"  
He carefully put the weathered old journal on the end table. "The first part of my life, I didn't have a chance to experience life without the knowledge that it would all end. So I never really got that 'don't know what you've got 'til it's gone' feeling.  
"But after the day he came back and we destroyed Cyberdyne, I started to see everything differently. I realized that there were beautiful things and people and places in the world, and as miserable as my life was, I hoped against hope that we really had prevented the war. And now that it's happened anyway . . . yeah, it's depressing."  
He was silent for a moment, then added oh so quietly, "I don't know what I would do if you weren't here."  
"Same here," she replied just as quietly. They somewhat awkwardly put their arms around each other and drifted off to sleep rather contentedly, given their circumstances. 


End file.
